5 tips for applying for tourism awards, from award-winning attractions
If you’d like to enter your visitor attraction for an award but don’t know where to start, this article will help.
We’ve asked Gold award-winning attractions at VisitEngland’s Awards for Excellence 2020 to share their advice on how to submit a successful award application.
Sasha Greig is Head of Visitor Experience, Retail and Marketing at Old Royal Naval College, which won Gold in the Large Visitor Attraction of the Year category, and Nerys Williams is Audience Development Manager at Gladstone Pottery Museum, winner of the Small Visitor Attraction of the Year category. Applying for awards is part of their jobs.
1. Make applying for awards part of your strategy
Make the process of finding awards to apply for and the process of applying for them part of your annual strategy.
When choosing awards to apply for, don’t be put off by the fee that comes with some award applications: “It’s well worth it for the benefits that you get back”, says Nerys. “If you can put a bit of time into applying, you’ll see some real rewards – even if you don’t win.”
Sasha recommends applying for as many awards as possible, not with the expectation of winning but because the process of applying will help you get better at it, and you never know what might happen. It’s a strategy that’s working for Old Royal Naval College. Over the last few years, they’ve won or achieved recognition in approximately half of the awards they’ve applied for.
2. Apply for smaller and less obvious awards as well
Think outside the box when looking for awards to enter your attraction into. It’s not just the obvious regional and national tourism awards that matter. Consider awards for volunteers, retail, architecture and sustainability, for example.
Gladstone Pottery is particularly proud of winning the Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce Business Award for the Culture and Tourism category. “People don't often think of museums as business-like,” says Nerys. “A lot of local authority museums don't generate a great deal of their running costs but we've always looked at the site in a commercially minded way because, especially in these times, it's a route to survival. We have a high-quality gift selection of locally sourced items and things we make ourselves so the shop has become a destination in its own right.”
3. Work on applications as a team
Applying for awards is less daunting and more effective when you involve as many attraction staff as possible. Talk to staff from every team, especially customer-facing, on a regular basis. As well as being aware of awards within their specialism that your attraction could apply for, they’ll be able to remind you of things your attraction is doing particularly well.
“I often see our tour guides in action,” says Nerys, “but talking to them individually gave me a very different perspective of how they interact with visitors. I didn't know how they tweaked their tours when they had, say, autistic children or older people with access issues in the group. The audience wouldn't realise either; it just goes smoothly for them.” Gladstone Pottery has won several awards for inclusive tourism, and Silver for Guided Tour of the Year at the 2017 Enjoy Staffordshire Tourism Awards.
4. Think of award applications as an ongoing process
Applying for awards is easier and quicker if you have the necessary information at your fingertips.
Nerys recommends keeping a folder handy to store anything that could be used when writing an award application. That might include, for example, a positive TripAdvisor review from somebody with an access issue.
It’s also important to take your time when writing your application. As a rule of thumb, start work on applications at least a month before the deadline. Think of it as a document that needs to evolve through multiple drafts and word counts. Allow time to consult with other staff members and to get it proofread by someone else.
5. Don’t forget the basics
With so many awards focussing on the more glamorous side of visitor attractions such as storytelling, it can be easy to forget about essentials like cleanliness and hygiene. But many awards consider this a key part of the assessment process.
“In our most recent assessment and accreditation, one of our biggest improvements was in the cleanliness and environment of our toilets and it was almost more meaningful because it would be an easy area to overlook,” says Sasha. “Hygienic washrooms make such a difference to a visitor’s experience, or even their ability to be able to visit in the first place; so many people rely on having accessible clean toilets to be able to go out for the day with confidence. It’s important to know that we're doing a good job here. It's a reminder to get the basics right as well as the more flashy stuff.”
